WWE has been the king of wresting on consoles for a long time now, however now a new contender is in town in the shape of TNA iMPACT, but can it steal the wrestling crown from WWE? One thing is for sure, we certainly have a fight on our hands.

Wrestling on TV and video games have always gone hand in hand, I remember playing WWF In Your House with Doink the Clown all those years ago and thankfully, whilst the wrestling is the same, the games have got a lot better. I personally was a solid fan until the smackdown series on the playstation 2, that’s when I got a bit bored with the genre, you see, nothing in my eyes can beat No Mercy on the N64, but no one wanted to play it, so it never had a true successor.  

TNA which is like a smaller version of the WWE, offers a good mixture of wrestlers from home grown stars to some all time classics including Kurt Angle, Sting and Booker T. TNA Impact reflects this great roster with plenty of characters from the show like Shark Boy and Jeff Jarrett, plus the ability to create a character, and while the create is not as good as other games it still offers plenty and also grows as you play, allowing you to change attributes like moves and poses throughout the game.

There are a few different modes in the game, however the main one is the story mode, which comes straight from a cheesy 80’s soap opera. You start off as Suicide, a title contender who seems unbeatable, some goons try to get you to take a fall on your big match for the belt, but you go ahead and win any way then as a consequence on your way home you are jumped and left for dead. As luck would have it you are found in lace w:st="on">Mexicolace> by some doctors who are also plastic surgeons, you have no idea who you are or what you do but you know that wrestling is part of you. After a few low key fights in lace w:st="on">Mexicolace> you cross the border and start getting to bigger venues and fighting more famous wrestlers. I really enjoyed the story in this game as it takes the "sport" element of the game and plays it tongue firmly in cheek, just like the crazy story lines you get on TV. As mentioned earlier, as you win more fights you start to unlock more clothes, moves and poses, making an ultimate fighter in the process.

Both during the story mode and the quick modes you will play a large selection of match styles, including your basic head to head, tag team, ultimate x and my favourite, the Fatal Four Way, which is just non stop action from every corner until you have a pin.  

The online mode allows you to customize the rules of each match and also has the same great selection as the single player mode. After a few games I realised I am not very good at this game, but it is still really good fun, plus the voice chat allows for great smack talk.

So far we have a great game on our hands, however it does fall apart a bit on the controls, they are very simple to use at first with punch and kick, grapple and action buttons for using ropes and picking up items on the face buttons, but the main problem is that to use a more powerful kick or grapple you need to use the LB, which is just a bit cumbersome, the RB is used to parry, so switching these around may have helped a bit in the control department. My other little bug bear is the collision detection, on the grappling and more energetic moves its OK but on the basic punches and kicks it seems worse than the pulled punches on the TV show.

Having been away from wrestling for so long I was pleasantly surprised at how fun this game was, the story is fantastic and gives you exactly what you would expect from a wrestling game. Any wrestling fan will not be disappointed with this title.